


wrapped deep inside you

by lucylikestowrite



Category: Code Name Verity Series - Elizabeth Wein
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But still canon compliant in the sad way lol, F/F, Fade to Black, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 18:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12282246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucylikestowrite/pseuds/lucylikestowrite
Summary: Julie could fool everybody but Maddie.





	wrapped deep inside you

Julie didn’t feel 21. When she was 15, she’d felt so mature, so much older than her years. Then the war happened, and she was forced to grow up for real, and now she felt closer to 30. She missed the person she used to be, before she spent every night in interrogations, and every day lying about what she’d spent the previous night doing.

 

Maddie, who wasn’t really much younger than her, seemed infinitely more youthful. Julie had a weight on her shoulders that Maddie couldn’t understand. That wasn’t to say that she didn’t bear her own weight, but it was just lighter, and more pleasantly shaped.

 

The weight on Julie’s back must have been wrapped in barbed wire. Sometimes she felt cuts down her spine; she ignored them.

 

Maddie loved flying. Julie did not love interrogating, but she did love the praise that came after, if you could call it that. She got nods from men superior to her, nods that, if she had any self respect, she would not wait for and file away as she did. But she did wait for them, and she did take note of them, because she was vain, and she liked being told she’d done a good job. It helped her forget that there was nothing good about what she’d just done, nothing at all.

 

Then she would pull her hair out of its harsh bun, allowing herself for a second to relish in the feeling of it flowing over her neck -  it was always clean because that was something she could control, even when everything else had gone to hell - and then she would redo it, the hairstyle softer, designed to fool people into thinking that she was young, innocent, and entirely harmless.

 

It always fooled people.

 

It fooled the officers at the dances she went to to distract herself. No-one considered the fact that they might be in the presence of one of the most ruthless, cold-hearted members of the Allied army. They just saw a pretty face on top of a small, shapely body, lips painted red, hair perfectly coiffed, and didn’t consider that there might be anything behind her eyes.

 

Julie didn’t mind. Dancing took her mind off everything. It made her heart race and her cheeks flush and she enjoyed it. She enjoyed the glances that she drew, even enjoyed the whistles that followed her everywhere. 

 

Sometimes the officers made it back to her bedroom, because it was the war and nobody cared about decorum any more. Everyone was aware that every night could be their last. Julie, more than others.

 

Every minute of her life seemed like a tightrope walk, balanced on a wire, neither end anywhere in sight.

 

Most of the time, however, she kept her bedroom to herself, especially once she was sharing with Maddie.

 

Maddie was like an angel sent from heaven. Julie wasn’t quite sure how she’d been lucky enough for their paths to cross, but they had, and Julie spent more time than she should thanking God for that.

 

Because, no matter how pleasant and put together Julie always appeared to be, on the inside, she was as close to falling apart as anyone else. By the time they were assigned a room together, Maddie was the only thing keeping her held together, every minute spent with her another stitch in the wounds in Julie’s side.

 

It took a while for Julie to realise how much she was depending on her friend to keep her sane, and a little longer to realise that her feelings had strayed away from friendship.

 

It wasn’t like it was something new - indeed, it hadn’t even felt new the first time she had kissed Ellen, more like settling into something familiar - it was just that it had been a while.

 

In truth, it had been more than a while. She hadn’t done so much as touched a woman since Ellen. The problem was that it was difficult.

 

Not because she was wrestling with anything. She’d never had trouble accepting who she was. Her parents had taught her to be proud of her heritage. She’d always lived with the knowledge that she was the product of a very long line of aristocracy. They had not taught her to be conceited, but sometimes she was, for better or for worse. She had never seen herself as someone who could be defective, or in any way wrong for being herself, so she took it in her stride when she found herself kissing Ellen and enjoying it, even if she knew others would take offense. 

 

So it wasn’t that she hated herself. It was that one couldn’t go around flirting with women and getting away with it. She accepted that as well. She wasn’t one for raging against the status quo, at least not outwardly, and so she kissed men, because she liked that as well, and didn’t think too much about women, because she didn’t have enough space in her head for that.

 

Then all of a sudden Maddie had crept into all the corners in her brain, and she couldn’t so much as look at anyone else. 

 

Outwardly, nothing much changed. She did not let it affect her work, because she was a professional and she was not losing the war over the girl. But she did worry slightly more when Maddie wasn’t in their room when she returned at night. 

 

Her face would light up more than it should when the door would inevitably open, and Maddie came through the door, shedding her coat and her uniform, pulling her hair out of whatever style she had managed to force it into.

 

She would collapse on her bed, and Julie would breathe a sigh of relief, because she was okay. 

 

She shouldn’t worry. Maddie was a civilian, and she wasn’t doing anything dangerous, not really. But she was flying giant metal machines, and she always seemed so young.

 

It was how earnest she was, still bright in the face of the largest war that the world had ever seen. When Julie was feeling particularly selfless, she wished Maddie would get fired, sent somewhere far away from any danger. It was a strange kind of selflessness, sure, but when she thought of the possibility of Maddie getting hurt, she felt sick. When she was feeling selfish, she wished Maddie would stay with her even when it got dangerous, and then she would feel even worse.

 

One night, Maddie was particularly late. Julie didn’t need to sleep. She’d taught herself to survive on as little sleep as she was able to get, and so she was awake, her nails tapping endlessly against the dresser next to her bed, trying to read but really just watching the door. A candle was lit on the dresser, something comforting about the teeny flickering light, staying alight despite everything trying to blow it out.

 

When the door opened, like it always did, the coat that Maddie shed was bloodstained. Julie got up abruptly, any thoughts of disguising her emotions out of the window.

 

Maddie looked at Julie distractedly, and said, “It’s not mine.” Julie sat back down.

 

Maddie peeled her clothes off, and there were more stains on her hands and up her sleeves, dotted over her usually pristine uniform. She changed into her pyjamas, and washed her hands and face, blood running off her skin and dying the water pink. It was strangely mesmerising. Then, instead of sitting down on her bed, she sat down on Julie’s.

 

Julie blinked. She looked down at Maddie’s hands, now clean. She looked up. Maddie kissed her.

 

It was a surprise and it wasn’t. Julie briefly considered that Maddie was braver than she had taken her for, and then she didn’t think about anything at all.

 

Maddie pulled away, and her face wasn’t even expectant. There wasn’t a hint of worry on her face, just the beginnings of a smirk. 

 

Julie couldn’t stop a smile from spreading across her face, shaking her head in disbelief. Maddie was far more cocky than Julie had ever realised, hidden behind a face that was so innocent, in a world that didn’t let women be confident.

 

She had to get that look off Maddie’s face, so she kissed her back. When they broke apart Maddie was looking even more smug. She grinned at Julie, biting her lip, and Julie almost went mad.

 

“No-one has ever looked at me the way you’ve been looking at me recently,” Maddie said, simply, like it was an indisputable fact, and as she said it, she turned just ever so slightly, and although Julie didn’t doubt that most of the confidence she’d been displaying was real, she could tell that this  _ had  _ been a risk.

 

Julie shrugged, as if that was any sort of answer. She supposed she’d already said what she needed to.

 

Maddie smiled, falling back against the bed. Her hair spread out on the white bedsheets like an ink spill, dark black curls settling haphazardly on the fabric.

 

“I was on a routine assignment when I got rerouted. I picked up a wounded soldier. I’ve never seen anyone bleed so much.”

 

She went silent, but Julie could hear the unspoken words, words that she thought every day.  _ Life is short. You’ve got to do things while you still have the chance. _

 

She fell back next to Maddie, staring up at the ceiling, where a single bulb hung, illuminating the small room.

 

Their hands found the other’s, fingers intertwining without really thinking. Julie turned to Maddie. They were so close that their hair was meeting in the space between their heads, blonde stark against black.

 

Maddie did the same, her eyes wide.

 

“What if you’d been wrong?” Julie asked, her fingers twisting around Maddie’s.

 

“I didn’t think you were the type to report me. Too patriotic. I’m a good pilot. I wouldn’t be worth wasting.”

 

For a second this stung. It made Julie seem clinical, but Maddie was right. She did think like that.

 

“But it doesn’t matter,” Maddie continued, “because I knew I wasn’t wrong. You looked at me like I looked at the very first girl I fell in love with.”

 

“And who might that be?” Julie asked, her voice low.

 

“Well,” Maddie said, considering. “No-one told me her name for a long time. I toned myself down before we were really friends because someone told me I stared too much. I don’t think they suspected anything. They just thought I was being rude, and not paying enough attention to my job.”

 

Julie stayed silent. Maddie continued. “She spoke all these languages and she had hair like an angel,” she said, breaking their hands apart to lightly pull on Julie’s hair, watching as recognition broke on her face, “and they called her Queenie. It seemed like an appropriate name. I think I fell in love with her right away.”

 

Julie closed her eyes. She was not the same person she had been when they met. She hadn’t started being Eva yet. She was harder, colder now.

 

She didn’t know how to say this without revealing secrets she could get fired or arrested for sharing. She stuck with, “I’ve changed since then,” not saying even a tenth of what she meant.

 

Maddie seemed to understand. “I know. So have I.”

 

_ “You haven’t,”  _ Julie wanted to scream. Julie had spent the past couple of years falling deeper and deeper into a hole she knew she wasn’t getting out of, and all Maddie had done was fly higher and higher. But she didn’t know how to say that without comparing herself to Maddie, and once again, she couldn’t say anything so she kept quiet.

 

Maddie read her silence like a book, because apparently, without Julie realising, Maddie had become the person who knew her best in the world.

 

Years away from her family would do that, she supposed.

 

“I know you do stuff you can’t tell me about,” Maddie said. “That’s okay.”

 

It wasn’t okay, but Maddie made it seem like it was.

 

Julie kissed her again, suddenly angry and sad all at the same time. Her hand raked through Maddie’s hair, and when she tasted salt, she realised she was crying. She hadn’t cried in a long time. Crying was a show of weakness, and she hadn’t got where she’d got to have some arsehole of an officer make fun of her because water was leaking from her eyes.

 

Maddie moved her head away, a finger coming up to brush tears from Julie’s cheek. 

 

“I don’t know if I’m going to survive this war,” Julie whispered, the truth spilling from her. She sat up abruptly, not used to being so honest. She had got used to lying.

 

Maddie followed her. She didn’t say anything to contradict Julie’s statement. She had obviously figured out that whatever Julie was doing, it was dangerous. “That’s okay.”

 

It wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay, but Julie knew what Maddie meant.

 

Their beds were small. Not double, hardly even single, but Maddie maneuvered Julie so that she was lying lengthways, her head finally on a pillow, then lay down next to her, squishing in next to the wall.

 

There was so little space that their faces were almost touching already, so it didn’t take much movement (or any movement at all, really), for Maddie to kiss Julie once more.

 

Julie’s hand rested on Maddie’s chest, and she could feel her heartbeat. Maddie’s mouth on hers was urgent, her hand on the back of Julie’s head pressing her inwards, as if trying to pull her closer.

 

Heat rose in Julie’s stomach and before she knew it, they had broken apart for shirts to be discarded, and then she was stumbling out of bed to turn off the light and make sure the door was locked and then they fell into something that was rushed and hesitant at the same time.

 

Maddie hovered over Julie, her eyes bright in the candle light, and when Julie pulled her down, bodies colliding, she let herself forget everything. The world would go on if she ignored the war for an hour.

 

And so she did, and the world did indeed keep spinning, although she wouldn’t have known that, so wrapped up in Maddie was she. Their hands were everywhere, and when they kissed, Julie forgot a little bit more.

 

This wasn’t new to her, not entirely, but it felt like it was. 

 

Maddie bit down on her lip, and her hands moved brazenly over Julie’s skin and when she blacked out for a second, stars behind her eyelids, that was definitely new.

 

She was almost happy.

 

They fell asleep twisted together, limbs belonging to both of them and neither of them.

 

Julie woke up first. They had not separated in the night. In fact, they seemed to have got closer, if that was possible. Her eyes roamed over the woman in front of her, and when her gaze flicked back up to Maddie’s face, she saw that Maddie’s eyes were open, looking at her.

 

“You’re doing it again,” Maddie whispered.

 

“What?” Julie whispered back.

 

“Looking at me like that.”

 

Julie couldn’t bring herself to blush. There was no time for that any more.

 

There was no time, so she kissed Maddie in all of her early morning glory, and then extricated herself, and everything went back to normal until the next night, when they pushed the beds in their room together and slept like that for the rest of the time that they shared a room. 

  
  
  


When Julie finally told her about Eva, Maddie kissed every bruise on Julie’s body, and didn’t stop loving her, because war was messy and ugly and Maddie already knew that.

  
  
  


When the bullet left Maddie’s gun, and buried itself under the skin that Maddie knew so well, she didn’t stop loving Julie either. If she had loved her less her finger wouldn’t have been able to pull the trigger. But she loved her, and in the end, it wasn’t okay at all.


End file.
